Report says Fine Gael’s election campaign failed in many areas

Fine Gael’s general election campaign failed in a range of areas, including vision, empathy, planning and communication, a report prepared for the party has found. The recommendations from the report carried out by Marion Coy, a former head of the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, were presented to the Fine Gael parliamentary party at its think-in in Newbridge, Co Kildare, yesterday.

Ms Coy has produced a substantial document on Fine Gael’s general election campaign but it will not be published in full until the party’s executive council is also briefed on its contents, which is expected to take place later this month. Fine Gael won 50 seats in February’s election, 26 fewer than in the previous election, in 2011.

Ms Coy outlined nine key recommendations to TDs and Senators. She also said campaign headquarters had a “fortress mentality” and that Fine Gael needed to “reassert its connection to constitutional republicanism”. Ms Coy’s report was one of two discussed by the parliamentary party, with the second drafted by party TDs and presented by Dublin Bay South TD Kate O’Connell.

Those who attended the briefing session said it was not acrimonious but was a constructive discussion, with one saying that it had managed to turn the negatives of the campaign into positives. One TD critical of Mr Kenny, however, described the session as the “biggest whitewash in the history of whitewashes” and a “farce” that contained “no analysis of the election campaign”.

Ms Coy’s last recommendation contained some sharp criticism of the election effort: “Future electoral strategy and planning must be conducted in a more inclusive manner and take into account the failures in vision, empathy, planning, tactical positioning, communication, campaigning and responsiveness identified in the 2016 campaign.”

It was also recommended that “Fine Gael should define its future as a campaigning party, anchored in local communities and tackling clearly identified national issues”; that the party should “build a strong network of connections at all levels of society and become much more open to external influences”; and that the party needed to be more cohesive.

Ms Coy also said Fine Gael’s research strategy and methodology should be completely overhauled; its communication strategies needed to be more open and diverse; the party membership must be “mobilised” through the development of “issue-based campaigns and the broadening of the mechanism for party engagement”.

A more cohesive and organised approach should be taken to the mobilisation of all elected representatives in pursuit of an annually agreed work programme.

Ms O’Connell’s presentation raised similar criticisms, and said Fine Gael should “avoid negative campaigning” and instead focus on its successes. “Campaigning should focus on our vision for society, with clear roadmaps to achieving our goals,” it said. In another criticism of the Fine Gael election slogan, the report produced by TDs also said: “Centrally produced party slogans and branding should be stress-tested within PP [parliamentary party] setting and in rotating, representative groups of members of the party.”

It also implicitly criticised the reliance on focus groups and said Fine Gael members and supporters should be used as “a focus group”.

Ms O’Connell also called for more regional meetings on a regular basis – in a similar fashion to those held after the election – to debate issues of concern and policy proposals.